orehand, or some musty proverb that
disrelishes all things whatsoever. If fear of the company make him second
a commendation, it is like a law-writ, always with a clause of exception,
or to smooth his way to some greater scandal. He will grant you something,
and bate more; and this bating shall in conclusion take away all he
granted. His speech concludes still with an Oh! but,--and I could wish one
thing amended; and this one thing shall be enough to deface all his former
commendations. He will be very inward with a man to fish some bad out of
him, and make his slanders hereafter more authentick, when it is said a
friend reported it. He will inveigle you to naughtiness to get your good
name into his clutches; he will be your pandar to have you on the hip for
a whore-master, and make you drunk to shew you reeling. He passes the
more plausibly because all men have a smatch of his humour, and it is
thought freeness which is malice. If he can say nothing of a man, he will
seem to speak riddles, as if he could tell strange stories if he would;
and when he has racked his invention to the utmost, he ends;--but I wish
him well, and therefore must hold my peace. He is always listening and
enquiring after men, and suffers not a cloak to pass by him unexamined. In
brief, he is one that has lost all good himself, and is loth to find it in
another.

XXV.

A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF THE UNIVERSITY

Is one that comes there to wear a gown, and to say hereafter, he has been
at the university. His father sent him thither because he heard there
were the best fencing and dancing-schools; from these he has his
education, from his tutor the over-sight. The first element of his
knowledge is to be shewn the colleges, and initiated in a tavern by the
way, which hereafter he will learn of himself. The two marks of his
seniority, is the bare velvet of his gown, and his proficiency at tennis,
where when he can once play a set, he is a fresh man no more. His study
has commonly handsome shelves, his books neat silk strings, which he shews
to his father's man, and is loth to unty[44] or take down for fear of
misplacing. Upon foul days for recreation he retires thither, and looks
over the pretty book his tutor reads to him, which is commonly some short
history, or a piece of Euphormio; for which his tutor gives him money to
spend next day. His main loytering is at the library, where he studies
arms and books of honour, and turns a gentleman critic